BHARTI TELESONIC: Picking up Mindshare

Bharti Group has taken the lead once again with the launch of national long
distance (NLD) under the brand name ‘India One’ by Bharti Telesonic. The
company has many first’s to its credit: it is the first cellular service
provider in Delhi, first private basic service provider in Madhya Pradesh, and
the first private long distance player in the country.

To provide corporate end-to-end connectivity, the company has presently
deployed approximately 12,000 km of OFC covering 50 cities and plans is to lay
another 14,000 km in the next 12-15 months. Nine switches are operational in the
cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Ahmedabad,
Chandigarh, and Bhopal. In the second phase, the company plans to install nine
more switches in the cities of Kolkata, Nagpur, Ernakulam, Jallandhur, Patna,
Lucknow, Guwahati, Bhubaneshwar, and Kolhapur. The network is based on an IP
backbone and currently, IP trials are on.

--	Leased E1 lines from infrastructure providers
__	Bharti Telesonic’s network

To provide an all-India coverage to corporates as well as carriers, the
company has tied up with IP-I and IP-II players like Power Grid Corporation of
India Ltd (PGCIL), Gas Authority of India Ltd (GAIL), Western Railway, and
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL). PGCIL has provided a link from Delhi to
Chandigarh, GAIL connects Delhi to Vijaipur, Western Railway connects Ahmedabad
to Mumbai, and BSNL connects Delhi to Kolkata and Kolkata to Hyderabad.

The launch of Bharti Telesonic’s operations in the country has put an end
to the monopoly of BSNL in the NLD segment. With the new year just approaching,
customers will now have the choice to opt for the best quality-of-service at an
affordable price, which was earlier non-existent. As Bharti Telesonic network
center is co-located with submarine cabling landing station at Chennai, carriers
do have an advantage of getting national as well as international bandwidth from
a single player rather than talking to multiple players in the past. The network
also has the flexibility, as it can interface with wide range of carrier’s
network. Even corporates will have an advantage of interfacing with either
copper, cable, fiber, or wireless, depending upon their needs. All these
services will be up and running, as the company is planning to provide a
service-level agreement supported with 99.9 percent network uptime and complete
multi-level redundancy.

To start with, the company is catering to carriers with E1 lines, but very
soon Bharti Telesonic is planning to provide services like DSL, IP VPN, IP
leased line, and frame relay services to corporates. Thus, corproates are
rolling out their leased line at a faster pace. Also, an increase in efficiency
of the network can be seen. On the voice front, corporates will also have an
advantage of the facilities like free phone (1-600) and premium services
(0-900), which they can offer to their clients to answer their queries or
problems. With the implementation of carrier access code, one will also have an
option of routing their call according to their choice. At that point of time,
Bharti is planning to launch pre-paid card, call collect and Web card for
end-users.

With VSNL, Reliance, and Tata, soon to join the NLD fray, one will see a
transformation from monopoly to oligopoly regime, and NLDOs that provide better
value for money to the carriers, corporates and retail customers, will gain the
larger share of the pie. And finally, the end-consumer will benefit.

Pravin Prashant